Far beyond Earth, in the dark stretch of space where no human vessel had ever reached, something vast drifted in silence.
It was not a ship.
It was a living structure.
A mass of layered, oily flesh—constantly shifting, pulsing, breathing. The Ihes did not build homes. They became them.
Inside, their humanoid forms moved through dim corridors of organic matter. Their smooth, oil-like skin reflected faint light, rippling with every step. Many of them bore wounds—deep cuts, torn layers, exposed tissue beneath the surface.
But none of them were dying.
They were growing stronger.
That was the nature of the Ihes. Every wound fed something deeper. Every injury that should have broken them instead became material—restructured, absorbed, converted into something harder. Something more. It had always been this way. Pain was not something to survive. It was something to consume.
They were not a species that feared damage.
They were a species built from it.
